By Marion Silver
An audience of second-generation Holocaust survivors was treated to two outstanding presentations on November 14th.
In Holding on Through Letters: Jewish Families during the Holocaust, historian and writer, Dr. Debórah Dwork focused on Elisabeth Luz, an unmarried, middle-aged, Protestant woman living in Stäfa, neutral Switzerland. Becoming known as Tante Elisabeth, she found herself, largely by happenstance, copying letters between Jewish children who had been sent to presumed safety and their often less fortunate parents who were left behind. The trove of original letters discovered in 1971 after her death reveal how cherished the letters were by the children and their parents who were living in such desperate circumstances. It is interesting that the many “nieces and nephews” of Tante Elisabeth never actually met her.
Third-generation Holocaust survivor, Rachael Cerrotti described how her award-winning podcast, We Share the Same Sky, told the multi-layered story of her grandmother, Hana Dubova, the sole survivor of her family. At 14 years of age, Hana found refuge in Denmark from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and later survived a dramatic escape to Sweden thanks to the efforts of the Danes
